Seventeenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Water Security (WS) is a desirable goal to ensuring the adequate quantity and quality of water for life-supporting processes and determining factor in society’s development. Reaching WS is a complex problem that must be solved in an integrated and interdisciplinary way. Integrated River Basin Management (IRBM) could be a means to achieve WS as long as it is supported by the development of an appropriate adaptive governance process, which emphasizes more collaborative and coordinated actions and recognizes river basins as complex social-ecological systems. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between WS and the hybrid conceptualization of hierarchical, market-based and network-based governances, namely metagovernance. We propose a form of “network of networks” as an effective approach to implement adaptive river basin management to facilitate an adequate quantity and quality of water for all sector needs. Since adaptive governance literature promotes the adoption of network structures and polycentrism, we argue that a “good water governance” approach implies the adoption of a network-based metagovernance system, in which both markets and hierarchies are embraced by networks as the most general category of coordination. Here, the role of metagovernors is key to avoid typical failures resulting from the exclusive application of network-based governance. In this sense, river basins as social-ecological systems must be regarded as networks as well, since social and ecological variables are interconnected and integrated trough a governance system observed at multiple scales. Further research is needed to achieve better coordination of multiple centers of decision-making and to best address context-specific strategies.

Presenters

Natalia Julio
Doctoral Student, Water Resources Center for Agriculture and Mining, CRHIAM ANID/FONDAP 15130015 University of Concepcion, Chile

Roberto Ponce Oliva
Associated Professor, School of Business and Economics, Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile

Ricardo Figueroa
Associate Researcher, Water Resources Center for Agriculture and Mining, CRHIAM ANID/FONDAP 15130015,University of Concepcion, Chile